❝ — in the SECOND WEEK OF THE NEW MOON in the early hours of the MEMORIAM OF SUNRISE, when all who claim affection for the stars lock their doors and bow their heads, loveliest cassiel seeks out he of the quick bite and the slow poison: THE VICE OF SLOTH. ❞
in the fog of the early morning she comes to him, broad-winged and baring solemnity upon her fair brow as a diamond upon a diadem. it glistens as she walks, a focal point for those who would witness her as she roams the mortal earth with unsurpassed fairness and humble bare foot. come, she says upon finding him without saying anything at all, lovely ankles swallowed by dawn’s rolling mist and one soft hand lost to the inner of his elbow. that which i am you are too; we are not made for this mourning.
there is no point to her ambling, but it is natural they take to the deep forest, arcane and gnarled as it is, flowers and rot sprouting hand in hand. as they pass the lip of the woods cassiel stops to shed her outer layer, stripping from her body a connective tissue of delicate silver chainmail and inlaid gemstones, sparkling things cut into the shape of tears from a high moon. she rests it upon a near branch, the edges and heavy points swaying until they touch together and sing like so many tinkling voices. poets and romantics would have made hymns out of that sound and the pattern of her breath.
freed from her decoration, now she wears only the white slip from beneath, a fabric supple and luxurious in its weightlessness. in the wet air it clings to her, exposing the globe of her hips, waist, the high rounds of breasts, pale and round as two peeled apples. wait for me, she calls after him, breaching the distance without waiting for a response or pause in body, for cassiel has never waited for that which she desires. her fingers slip into the spaces between his, palm to unholy palm, and though the grip is tight now, she will release it later when a thing outside his reach attracts her interest. that is simply her nature, and in that she knows it is samael’s own too.
so the woods are taken this way between them, pressing deeper into thickets of moss and vine between open hands and conversation, until her companion stops before a configuration upon the ground. though it is wrapped thickly in root and lichen, as if the earth of the holy land was only part-way through an alchemic claim, there is no mistaking the form that lays beneath: a body. mortal, from the lack of wings, though any further identification would be impossible for how their features had been replaced by wet vegetation and violent-purple blooms. cassiel, breathless, can only stare. time. it moved forth in an inevitable way that god could only have matched if michael tied his body to a golden chariot, ankles dragging in the wet sand. the sight of it displayed so keenly, so viciously, pulls her breath out from her chest with a fraying rope.
cassiel moves forward and slots into him as closely as a shadow thats been unstitched from his side, free to roam of her own volition but once more returning to where she had once been braided in. the seams cut loose by his fall wriggle about their feet like worms water-loosed by rainfall. silken maggots wriggle by their ankles, little droppings of fate. a hand lays itself upon his torso.
